"The Void Wears A Crown Of Forget-Me-Nots"

Chapter 8: Red Eyes, White Fur

[ This rewrite is brought to you by listening to; "crying alone in a ballroom with melancholic spirits" ]

'Oh fuck, oh fuCK, OH FUCK,'

Xelqua held on to his missing golden stone like his life depended on it as he full-force sprinted down the unfamiliar hallway.

'Well, I mean, this is nothing new, but running for your life three months after having a sword shoved through ya' is kinda inconvenient. Not by much, but by enough.

And that's not even talking about the-

Wait, where the FUCK am I?!'

Something was different, Xelqua could tell it by the look of the walls. The blur of a soft yellow was a glaring difference from the gray and black he knew.

Questions blared through his mind, but Xelqua had to push them down as he ran. Yet still, the deep feeling of wrongness crept up and twisted through his bones as the void had done once before.

The young teen closed his eyes as Xyia's whip grazed his back with a furious crack.

Little did Xelqua know, however, that there was something coming up in front of him that was much more dangerous than the woman behind him.

A gash in the earth, as long and wide as a ravine that reached so deep that it hit the void below them, was only a few paces in front of him. And he was so consumed by his desire for the people he had loved and lost that he was unable to see it.

Then he opened his eyes and felt his blood run cold when he did see it.

Xelqua didn't have enough time to stop, or any room to turn back without being caught, so he did the only thing he had left to do.

Xelqua jumped.

For a long moment, Xelqua was sure he wasn't going to make it, but then Xelqua's body collided with the ground, hard.

The boy cried out when his shoulder slammed down at the wrong angle so hard that it disconnected. Xelqua's leg dangled into the ravine and snagged on a sharp edge of the rock.

The pain hadn't fully yet caught up to the boy yet, so when he tugged his leg over the edge of the ravine, he didn't feel the way the rock cut deep into his skin, or how blood poured from the long gash.

Xelqua got to his feet and looked over his shoulder to see Xyia glaring at him from across the broken illusion.

Xelqua froze.

For a moment, the only thing he saw around him was a cave.

""Why...?""

Xelqua looked back up at his chaser.

""But... didn't you fall?""

Her hair fell in angry waves as she looked at him, her magic blazing and bubbling turning the air around her a tinted red.

""Didn't I push you, Olga?""

Xelqua blinked, the void shifting around him.

'No, no no no no no.

Her name was Xyia. It always had been, and it always will be.'

Xelqua took a step back as she took a step forward, "I will catch you, and when I do I will make you wish you could have died in that void." She growled, stepping to the edge of the ravine, holding her whip in an iron grip.

Xyia stood there but didn't move over the gap. Almost like she was afraid or forbidden to do so. And despite his fatigue, and the dull pain under his ribs, Xelqua felt laughter bubbling up inside of him, and despite everything that told him not to, he let it loose.